


Assimilation

by Hectopascal



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Sorry Not Sorry, self indulgent trash fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 08:46:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6511186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hectopascal/pseuds/Hectopascal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Honor us, Corvo Attano. Honor your people.”</p>
<p>He bows low and replies, “Yes.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assimilation

“I am sending you because you are my best, Corvo,” his lord says to him in private, the day before he is to board a ship to the land he will spend the rest of his days defending. “This Emperor of theirs is a good man, a fair man, and he must see that we are good and fair too, but also strong, fierce, and cunning.

“Honor us, Corvo Attano. Honor your people.”

He bows low and replies, “Yes.”

 

Corvo comes to this new kingdom as an unashamed foreigner, gifted to the High Emperor as a tribute, but in the capital city of the Isles he discovers that this doesn’t hold as much gravity as it does back home.

He is greeted with due formality and then almost immediately shuffled out of sight and into a cramped barrack full of novice guardsmen. He can still fulfill his duty from here, so this doesn’t particularly bother him.

The guards, on the other hand, do.

He is younger than all but one of them, the thinnest, and the shortest.

He finds their pale skin exotic and marvels over how easily it takes on color by bruising or exposure to the sun or sickness or a dozen other inane reasons. They do not seem to feel the same way about his own skin, a common dark brown like well aged wood.

The way he chooses to wear his hair is another thing about him that issue is taken with. It is black and straight and very long. Every morning he combs it with his fingers and twists the strands into one heavy braid that reaches the lowest point of his back when he stands straight.

There is not one person in Gristol who looks like him, not man or woman, adult or child. It is not fashionable or feminine, just something else that marks him as Other.

(In truth, this is not an unusual sentiment even back home. Corvo wears his hair long because he likes it and because he can. Nobody gets closer to him than he allows and the few who try to make a grab for the tempting target his braid presents regret it quickly thereafter.)

He refuses to be in any way embarrassed about what he looks like or where he comes from, and he suspects this is what they view as his most damning quality.

They call him words in a strange tongue he does not have meaning for, but knows them to be insults. He does not respond in kind because he was taught to guard his tongue from a young age lest it be taken from him, and his silence in the face of their taunts is mistaken for weakness.

Not one person came out of Serkonos that wasn’t a thief or a whore, one freckle-faced guard mocks. Which are you?

The others laugh while Corvo blinks placidly at him and does nothing. There is a time and a place, he knows, and this is not it.

He thinks of answering truthfully anyway—Both, he might say, at separate times and together. Which profession were you interested in, exactly?—but he doesn’t. It would serve no purpose aside from ending a betting pool currently debating whether he is or isn’t mute.

_I will honor my people._

Besides, he isn’t a thief or a whore anymore. Now. Now, he is something else.

 

Eventually someone proposes a practice duel. It is likely an excuse to conduct a public beating and an exercise in humiliation. Corvo thinks this to be a wise idea. The men he shares a barrack with march out in a crowd surrounding him, smiling meanly and joking as they troop towards the training grounds.

“You ever been in one of these?” one of the more persistent aggravators asks. He is sandy-haired with eyes the color of spring leaves and if his spirit had been kinder, Corvo might have enjoyed knowing him.

He has memorized the names of all thirty five men but has yet to use any of them, even in the privacy of his own head. None of them use his name after all and returning courtesies is an important part of navigating social politics.

Corvo tilts his head, thinking, and then shakes it. Not quite like this, no, but close.

The shared laughter gets louder, but he doesn’t get what is supposed to be funny. He supposes he’ll find out sooner or later. They cannot resist explaining their jokes, even when he would prefer they did not.

There is a flat length of ground in the center of the training grounds, fenced off in a circular shape. Someone hands him a wooden club cut crudely in the shape of a sword. He extends his free hand until someone else, scoffing, hands him a second one.

He climbs into the ring. Five men follow him. Perhaps they mean to take turns.

“Ready to learn, bitch?” one asks. This form of address is all he has seen fit to grace the Serkonan with since the day he arrived.

Corvo swipes the clubs through the air to get a feel for the weight of them and nods.

They lunge for him, but he is already moving and (unfortunately for them) much faster.

The one on the left has previously suggested multiple times that Corvo would perhaps be better suited sucking cock for coins rather than playing at being a soldier.

Corvo shatters his defense with one powerful hit and then follows up with a strike that breaks his jaw if the loud crack and strangled scream is anything to go by. He brings his other club down and up, doing his absolute best to _crush_ the fool’s genitals.

When his opponent collapses without a sound, Corvo rounds on the others (horror-stuck, he notes with savage amusement) and charges. The smile that curves his lips is hardly visible but deeply satisfied.

It rather goes downhill from there.

Corvo _flies_ over the head of the one who threw the contents of a chamber pot at him, a whirling storm of powerful, expertly placed blows peppered with jabs designed to cause pain, not incapacitation.

More climb the fence to defend their comrades from the unexpected massacre.

Good, Corvo thinks, dodging a club aimed at his skull and breaking someone’s knee at the same time. He wants to teach all of them a lesson.

This is the time for _them_ to learn.

 

In the end, he is sentenced to six months of punishment duties and regrets nothing. Even bowed with a scrub brush in his hand and his eyes fixed on the work to be done there is nothing wrong with his ears and so he hears plainly Edmund in conversation with the newest guard, a lanky boy with broad shoulders and massive hands and no idea how to use any of his natural gifts in a fight.

“Hey, watch out for that guy over there.” Edmund says in a tone that’s likely intended to be all generous senior to uninformed rookie. He still sounds slightly wary. “He’s _Corvo Attano._ ”  

“…Should I recognize him?” the newest guard asks, concerned. Corvo will have to find out his name later.

But for now, he smiles just so and thinks about honor.


End file.
